Many people use information or knowledge as part of their function within a business or other organization. These knowledge workers acquire information from multiple sources, and use this information in relation to some business activity to generate value to the corporation or entity. As available information sources become larger and more complex to serve a variety of knowledge workers, the task to identify and retrieve significant and meaningful information becomes more difficult. This flood of information presents a challenge to provide information to the user that is valid and useful in the knowledge worker's activities.
Knowledge workers may spend significant time looking for the applicable information in the form of data or processes to achieve their business purpose. Once locating the appropriate data or process, the knowledge workers spend additional time validating and reformatting the information to meet the current need. Because the primary input to the knowledge worker task is information, work quality depends on access to high quality sources of relevant information. Likewise, worker productivity depends upon minimization of information search and validation.
Since most knowledge workers have a limited amount of time to complete an assigned task, the difficulty in obtaining valid and useful information places a further constraint on the time available and, in some cases, causes vital information to be overlooked. Similarly, too much information or data overload may exacerbate the situation. Existing systems that collect, manage, and categorize information may not ensure the validity and usefulness of information for the knowledge worker.